"Your personal integrity will be protected by prior commitments. Job secured his commitment to integrity before facing a challenge. He wrote, "All the while my breath is in me, and the spirit of God is in my nostrils; My lips shall not speak wickedness, nor my tongue utter deceit. . . . till I die I will not remove mine integrity from me" (Job 27:35). Job knew he would face his Maker one day in judgment. He recorded this hope: "Let me be weighed in an even balance, that God may know mine integrity" (Job 31:6). Shakespeare gives reason for a strong prior commitment to integrity in lines he penned for his character Tarquinius in the poem The Rape of Lucrece. As Tarquinius contemplates the conquest of a woman in lust, he argues against himself:
What win I if I gain the thing I seek?
A dream, a breath, a froth of fleeting joy.
Who buys a minute's mirth to wail a week?
Or sells eternity to get a toy?
For one sweet grape who will the vine destroy?
[The Rape of Lucrece (1594), lines 21115]
Commitments to integrity are learned from parents. The Lord said to Solomon, "Walk before me, as David thy father walked, in integrity of heart, and in uprightness, to do according to all that I have commanded thee, and. . . keep my statutes and my judgments" (1 Kings 9:4)."
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